Two hours later and the memories of the map he had drawn faded, he showed a group of 10 houses which we found and then to take a track on the left.

What he didn’t say was that we would come to an open grass area with more tracks going off it than spaghetti junction.

Ken was doing his best impression of Steve McQueen in the great Escape riding across the fields and jumping fences, and to keep in the part, he ended up trapped in an embankment with the bike and him stuck.

I had gone on ahead path finding and found what I thought was a decent trail. There in the silence I waited, still nothing, so I thought I had better go back and find them.

I found Darren all on his own, wondering why he was there, lost in bear country with a bike that wouldn’t start and friends that had buggered off and left him.

Phil had gone back to look for Ken and found him having gone a bridge too far and stuck down a ridge unable to restart the bike.

They managed to drag it back up and push it down the track to bump start – we were off again. I remember falling off a few times always it seems in the water for some reason.

Didn’t think puddles could be that deep but of course I was always the last through so they got deeper and deeper as the others went through.

Phil commented that I should do away with the bike jacket and wear a life jacket instead. An hour later we came to a small hamlet over a bridge and found tarmac!

Unfortunately the road went two ways and with the way our luck was going we didn’t want to take any chances, so off to speak to the locals – now like I said, I have been to Bulgaria many times but only picked up a few useful phrases like – Beer, coffee, good morning and where’s the bill – not much good when you want to know the directions to the nearest Petrol station.

But all was not lost, a few hand gestures, like pointing to the tank and running the hand across the throat – they did look a bit startled at first, I think they expected us to commit suicide or similar – and they were nearly right!

But eventually we got the directions and we were on our way to civilization – well everything in life is relative isn’t it!